A few facts

The French-language school network in minority communities – in other words, outside the Province of Quebec – encompasses 28 school boards located in all of Canada’s provinces and territories except Quebec.

These school boards comprise more than 700 elementary and secondary schools that collectively serve some 180,000 students.

The French-language education system is based on the concept of the civic community school (CCS), which is founded on the three pillars of success, engagement and an education continuum. It promotes their political, economic and socio-cultural engagement in the Francophone community. A CCS is an educational space fully rooted in the community, yet open to the world. The CCS approach is designed to reach out to students, school staff, parents and all other partners.

Over 7.8 million Canadians, or more than 20% of the Canadian population, speak French. The proportion of French-English bilingual Canadians is 18.0%. Apart from the province of Quebec, where French is the dominant language, Francophones are present throughout the country. While English and French are still the main languages spoken in Canada, the country’s linguistic diversity continues to grow. (Source: Statistics Canada, Census 2021)

The employment income of bilingual Francophones is higher than that of the general unilingual English-speaking population.

• According to the results of the study English-French Bilingualism Outside Quebec: An Economic Portrait of Bilingual Canadians, the Conference Board of Canada estimates that bilingual Canadians outside Quebec earn an average of $5,237 more per year than unilingual English speakers. (Source: Bilingualism pays off for employees and provinces ONFR.TFO)
• Knowledge of official languages by income statistics, age and gender: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations including parts thereof (Statistics Canada)